Assessing the Measurement Quality of Justice Evaluations of Earnings in Europe

Abstract

How individuals perceive the fairness of their pay carries profound implications for individuals and society. Perceptions of pay injustice are linked to a spectrum of negative outcomes, including diminished well-being, poor health, increased stress, and depressive symptoms, alongside various detrimental effects in the work domain. Despite the far-reaching impact of these justice evaluations, validity evidence on their measurement in survey research is missing. Two measurement strategies dominate applied justice research with surveys: Asking for evaluations using a response scale or relying on measures of the just reward to capture fairness. It remains an unresolved question which of these two prevailing approaches—corresponding to the concepts of expressed justice and experienced justice, respectively—yields more robust and high-quality assessments, especially in cross-country research contexts where measurement consistency is critical. This study evaluates the measurement quality of these two approaches using the European Social Survey, which encompasses 29 countries. Our comparative analysis of experienced and expressed justice for gross and net earnings offers comprehensive insights into measurement choices in cross-national surveys. We find that nonresponse to income questions significantly undermines the measurement quality of experienced justice due to its dependence on actual earnings data. Moreover, while both experienced and expressed justice correlate with related concepts as anticipated, the patterns are more consistently observed in expressed justice. These findings suggest that survey practitioners aiming to measure distributive justice of earnings may favor expressed justice instruments, particularly those utilizing rating scales, for efficient and rigorous evaluation.